Indian billionaire Subrata Roy may score a jailhouse office to auction off his trophy properties

An office, a secretary, some video-conferencing gear. It’s a lot to ask at a jailhouse, right? But these are just the basics that the 66-year-old Indian billionaire Subrata Roy is requesting as he tries to auction off his iconic real estate properties around the world to come up with a whopping 100-billion-rupee ($1.7 billion) bail tab, Bloomberg reports. And the Indian court may grant Roy’s requests.

An Indian supreme court judge, T. S. Thakur, has asked the government to respond to Roy’s request for a decked-out jailhouse office space by Aug. 1, arguing that it’s only fair to facilitate his efforts to raise bail money. “We should provide facilities to Roy to arrange money for bail,” Thakur said. “We can’t keep him in jail and ask him to pay money. International buyers would be interested in these assets.”

Sahara also owns a 75% stake in the iconic New York Plaza hotel in midtown Manhattan. The hotel could command a sale price in the neighborhood of $575 million, the Economic Times estimates.

Roy’s current circumstances may put him at a significant disadvantage in real estate transactions, however, and some buyers may see his predicament as an opportunity to score a big discount. If so, that could cut into Roy’s bail money fund.